


reaching

by fanfoolishness (LoonyLupin), LoonyLupin



Series: Level 10: Agents of Shield Fic [7]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Amputation, Angst, Gen, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Season 5 Spoilers, season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 06:38:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14303007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/fanfoolishness, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LoonyLupin/pseuds/LoonyLupin
Summary: Phil’s an optimist, always has been.  But Elena was never one for platitudes; she’s too clever, too impatient.  She gets to the heart of things.--Based on episodes 99/100.





	reaching

There isn’t  _time._

That’s the thing.  Time’s elastic, it turns out, and yet there’s never enough of it.  They shriek through time and space into a shattered future, and they fling themselves back by the force of their will, and still Phil feels it, thin and scanty and wanting, thrumming in the beat of his heart.

There’s not enough time, especially not for him, and every time he tries to tell himself he’s  _fine_  with that, something happens to make him reach for just a little bit more.

Like Elena.  

He sits beside her the rare times Mack doesn’t.  It’s the least he can do.  She drowses on morphine, and he remembers the shock, the blood, the haze of drugs and trauma, the phantom pain.  How long ago was it?  

Then he remembers that time’s elastic now, and he isn’t sure how long ago it was that he saw his own arm severed on the floor.  He just remembers how it hurt.  How it haunted.

Phil tries to tell her it’ll be okay.  Fitz knows what he’s doing, and Phil’s an optimist, always has been.  But Elena was never one for platitudes; she’s too clever, too impatient.  She gets to the heart of things.  Asks him if he can  _feel_  it.

He opens the fingers of his prosthetic.  Closes them.  A fist forms, a beautiful, hollow mimicry of the real thing.  It’s perfect, and deliberate, and it doesn’t feel anything.

“No,” he says.  And he wishes he could  _fix_  it, wishes he could reach back in time and undo it.  Maybe he could have warned her.  Maybe he could have warned both of them.  

The night stretches on, and he senses more than sees the team humming around him, working the impossible task.  Save the world, again.  He wishes he had more to give.

Phil rests his face in his hands.  One is warm and innervated, sensitive to the keenest movement, forever a part of him.  The other hums in a lively dance of technical proprioception, but even years later, it’s a stranger.

“Does it still hurt?” Elena asks, her voice husky with the need to know.

“Sometimes,” Phil says, and he reaches out to lay his hand on her shoulder.  It looks so real.  “Sometimes it does.”


End file.
